Sunday, October 07, 2007

A truly, truly sickening piece in the NYT on the use of rape as a weapon in war in Congo. As the article mentions, rape has always been a weapon in war - the Soviets, if my memory serves me correctly, used it pervasively in Germany at the end of World War II - but what's different about the phenomenon in Congo is the sheer brutality. For instance:

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

And this:

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

Can you imagine having your wife raped in front of you? Can you imagine not even being allowed the "concession" to close your eyes? And most of all, can you imagine being raped by five men - five! - with your husband forced to watch, and then watching your husband be shot? Do experiences like this completely reorient the definition of what we commonly refer to as "pain"?